Wednesday, February 8, 2012

[ZESTCaste] For Mayawati, a do-or-die battle

Dalit leader's alienation is a classic tale of a leader losing touchwith the masses

As the serried ranks of dalits, men and women, stoic determination ontheir faces, silently marched into Sitapur, 85 km north of Lucknow onFebruary 1, from where Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati launchedher election campaign, the scrunch of dry leaves beneath their feetwas only occasionally interrupted by the cry of: "Koi nahi takkarmein, kahan pade ho chakkar mein" (There's no one in the contest, whyare you getting confused).

For Mayawati's core dalit supporters, this is a do-or-die battle, asthe electoral arena gets increasingly hostile for the Bahujan SamajParty (BSP), with a resurgent Mulayam Singh-led Samajwadi Party (SP)assiduously whipping up resentment among the straining-at-the-leashupper castes, working to create a coalition of all those who want thebahujan project to crumble. As U.P.'s two premier parties remainlocked in mortal combat, it is becoming increasingly clear that theBSP's "plus vote", a product of the party's incredibly successfulsarvajan (all communities) experiment of 2007, is slipping away.

The reasons for the alienation are not far to seek: in the five yearssince Mayawati swept the polls in the State, leading the BSP to anabsolute majority after a gap of 16 years, the queen of dalit heartshas grown into a remote empress. Party insiders told The Hindu thatshe rarely emerged from her citadel on the fifth floor of the Statesecretariat — known reverentially as the pancham tal — in Lucknow orher heavily guarded official residence on Mall Avenue. Neither was sheable to keep as sharp an eye as she had done in the past on the partymachinery.

Unlike in her earlier three stints as Chief Minister, she allowed acoterie of key ministers and officials to run the show. "They assuredher that all was well," says a former minister, "and she bought ittill it was too late, and she began to throw out ministers, evendenying half her sitting MLAs tickets." If she had taken punitiveaction against her ministers half-way through her term, rather than onpoll-eve, adds a senior civil servant, "no one could have stopped herfrom returning to power with an absolute majority as, by and large,her administration has been superior to that of her predecessor."

Mayawati's is a classic tale of a powerful leader losing touch withthe masses: she depended entirely on a trio of political leaders,Satish Mishra, Naseemuddin Siddiqui and Baburam Kushwaha and a groupof officials led by her Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar. Mishra haslost his hold over the Brahmins, as his visit last week to Allahabadand Varanasi demonstrated, with his own community giving him a frostyreception; Siddiqui was more of a lathaith (strongman) than theparty's Muslim face, as a police officer put it; and Kushwaha wassacked for corruption, taking the support of the Kushwaha communitywith him. Much of her energies, government sources say, was reservedfor keeping the peace among her favourites.

In the process, Mayawati not only became inaccessible — she stoppedtouring the State, making surprise inspections of districts as she wasearlier accustomed to doing. In January 2011, when she finally decidedto take sameeksha baithaks (review meetings) in the districts, she wasshocked at the hostility she had to face, recalls a BSP leader: "Insome places, people lay down in front of her car, and she had toimpose a virtual curfew during her tour."

A key complaint against the Mayawati regime that the SP has been ableto successfully use against it is the "misuse" of the Scheduled Caste(Prevention of Atrocities) Act against the upper castes in the ruralareas. In Lucknow, a senior bureaucrat says, "To be fair to Mayawati,she had given instructions that a close watch should be kept oncomplaints filed under the Act, but the comfort of numbers meant sheleft the running of the administration to her key aides. She feltinvulnerable." A telling comment on the difference in the style ofadministration comes from Sunil Singh, a driver, whose father is agovernment peon in the state capital. "My father has a drinkingproblem," he says," but I recall in Mayawatiji's earlier regimes, hewas forced to be punctual. This time, he was back to his bad oldways."

As Mayawati slackened her hold on the administration, the rot enteredthe party organisation as well, with corruption entering the ranks ofits "life force," the BSP's powerful coordinators, known in partycircles as the "superpowers." In the BSP, the district coordinatorsmanage and monitor the party's MLAs, reporting on them to Behenji — asthe chief minister is known to the party cadres — and even suggestingwhether they should be pulled up, replaced or dropped. In Gonda, forinstance, the popular BSP sitting MLA Zaleel Khan has been replaced bya newcomer, Sagheer Usmani, confides an unhappy party worker, becausethe coordinator was "persuaded to do so by the SP." Mr Khan iscontesting as an Independent, he says, and will cut into the BSP'svotes. Surprisingly, the story is repeated by local Muslimshopkeepers. The MLAs, on their part, had almost no access to thechief minister, making it difficult for them to present their cases.Incidents such as these have meant that while the BSP's core voteremains intact and raring to go again, the party workers are no longeras enthusiastic about mobilising votes as they were in 2007. Herfamed caste-based bhaichara (camaraderie) committees are stillfunctioning, but not as effectively as earlier.

The irony is that even though her own vote base is intact, and amajority view across communities is that Mayawati's administration wassuperior to that of her predecessor both in terms of governance andcrime control, the tide is turning against her, largely because of theway caste interests are playing out in the State. A section ofeducated urban voters, especially among women, feel her record hasbeen far better than that of Mulayam Singh — she put several notoriousmafiosi behind bars, they say. A young woman Muslim lawyer inAllahabad says, "I come from a Congress family, but I am voting BSPagain: Mayawati has made the State safer for women."